


eat you alive

by livblaines



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Drabble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-03-21 09:37:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3687348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livblaines/pseuds/livblaines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unconnected series of Liv/Blaine drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pilot

She had looked untouchable.

Dark hair strewn too neatly against her back. The flowers of her dress unplucked.

Eyes skirting past him.  Mind sinking through the ocean, spinning towards the sky, turning anywhere other than the boat.

She had looked out of place.  He wanted to fix her there.

Her thoughts had seemed to weigh her limbs steady still.  He wanted to fog them, drug them, free.

She had looked untouchable – so, of course, he wanted to eat her whole.

(Months later, he’ll see her with bits of someone else’s brain on her lips.)

(And, hey, that works fine for him too.)


	2. Brother, Can You Spare a Brain?

Sex has never disturbed Liv. It’s never turned her tongue to lead, or her cheeks to rose petals.  It’s biological.  Physical. Ignore the frills, and it’s science, really, and so right in her wheelhouse.  Nothing to stutter or _um_ your way around; not when frankness is the clear winning bet for safe intimacy.

(Never mind the painter currently coursing through her system; his certainty that sex is an act of beauty, of art, of anything but science.)

Frankness. Biology.  She knows all of this.  Nevertheless, a cringe still climbs the curve of her face when she turns around to find Blaine’s snow pale hands combing through the copy of _Trend Style_ lying among her things.

“Number four,” the corners of his mouth spread as his finger drawls between pages. “Nice.”

Liv bristles, rolls her eyes, and leans against the counter. “Ravi’s.” 

His eyebrows spike.  “Brother’s got game.  Now I usually go for _Playboy_ myself, but each their own, am I right?”

“I thought you wanted to discuss brains.”  Her fingers curl a grip around the folds of her dress, all too aware of Javier Abano’s experience with certain – her tongue darts a sprint against her lips, her eyelids a blink – positions.

Eyes still lowered, Blaine works at the corner of a page into a dog-ear.  “Harsh.  Sore subject?”

“Personal. Invasive.  Off topic.”

“Definitely sore,” he mutters into the magazine’s centerfold.  “Hint taken.  So about those brains--”

His fists clench against her dress’s cotton.  "How is it not sore for you?  One day, you have a perfectly healthy sex life, and the next you’re carrying the world’s deadliest disease.”

His face relaxes into a grin, mangled with a chuckle, hiding a question.  “Are you calling it a disease?  ‘Cause I was thinking of it more as a permanent life style change.”

 _Oh, because that fixes everything_. “Well, as long as we have the proper terminology.”

“Look,” he folds the magazine back onto the table, “you’re asking if I miss sex?  Not having to worry about passing on the Big Z to my S.O.? If you’re not dealing with humor, you’re not dealing.” 

Her hips flatten against the table, every line of her back suddenly tense with just how close Sleazy McZombie is standing to her -- just how much Abino’s brain admires the fine-cut slant of his cheekbones, the ocean-depth penetration of his eyes.

If she moved a step, she’d be touching him.  “You have a significant other?” she echoes.  Her voice grits a bit too harsh against her throat.

He tilts his head, scrunches his lips.  “Purely hypothetical.”

Liv isn’t sure if she needs to breathe.  She definitely doesn’t need to battle hyperventilation.  Steeling her breath slow, she turns around to face the vacant slab.

She wants to punch him in the face.  She wants to touch him.

(Because she _could_ , as her lunch is so eager to remind her. She could touch him, bite him, scratch him, and leave him absolutely unchanged.  It’s only fair, really, given what he did to her--)

“Right,” she cuts her thoughts jagged.  “Now back to the brains--”

* * *

Hours later, she’s flipping through the magazine again, aching and empty. 

“Brain of a sex addict painter,” she mutters to the emptiness of the morgue.  “Who needs drugs?”

Number seven is bookmarked.

Liv bites her lower lip.

Blaine may be a lying creep, but damn if he doesn’t have good taste.


	3. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liv isn’t fooled for terribly long. (In which Blaine hires Lowell to seduce Liv for brain-related purposes.) 
> 
> AU drabble written after 1x05, and set sometime in the future.

“Was it the hair?” The morgue air feels stiff around him, his every footstep a gunshot against its sterile, air-conditioned hum.

Liv won’t look at him.  “What?” For the first time since he’s met her, Liv sounds rather dead.  Monotone voice. One-word answer.

Liv won’t even turn around.  

“A few months ago,“ Blaine drawls a lean against the wall, chin tilting towards the buzz of the ceiling lights, “I walk in here, the first zombie to take the time to greet you, might I add, and I don’t recall any sudden desperation to jump my bones.”

He can’t fault Liv for the lapse in her reply.  He can picture her obscured face, all red eyes – the natural kind – and unblinking. Unnaturally still, as though a twitch will break her.  Tensed around the occupied slab, fingers inches away from a crippled mess of pale skin, she holds herself together through the clench of her knuckles.  They seep bone white against her chalk skin.

He shouldn’t be here, doesn’t need to be here, doesn’t want to miss the sight of Liv Moore heartbroken.  Heartbroken by his – albeit indirect – hand.  

Blaine cocks his head, and pretends to examine his nails.  “I hear some chicks dig brunettes.  Now, I don’t get the appeal myself, but…”  He shrugs the bones of a chuckle.  “You do you.”

“Yeah, well I don’t get the appeal of psychopathic sadists.”  Her arms are still tense, her knuckles still locked, every bit of her still as rigid as a steel rod.  “Weird, huh?” And she still won’t look at him.

He hisses a breath, kicks himself from the wall, regrets the loss of its recline. “Rockstar McDreamy lied to you.  I just–” It’s worth the betrayal of his laziness to watch yet another twinge of tension creep her spine’s length for every step he moves towards her.

“Paid him to?”

“I did you a favor.”

He can pinpoint the exact moment her rubber band calm snaps.  Scalpel still in one hand, she whirls on her heel, whirls towards him. Her glare could dissect a brain. “Gee, should I send flowers or a thank you note for the lackey you paid to seduce me for my brains?” An edged smile slices her lips. “Literally.  He was sleeping me for literal brains.  So you could sell them in your creepy zombie drug ring. Thank you  _so much_.”

Her scalpel rises an inch towards him.  Blaine swallows a smirk. “Everyone has a price,” he says calmly, palms facing her.  Psychologically, that communicates openness; at least according to his wacko of a college psych professor. “Now you know what his is.”

At the moment, he’s an open book locked on one forged page.  A regular  _Gone Girl_. She does not need to know this.

Grip colorless around her scalpel, it grows whiter still, higher still, for every inch he moves towards her. “He’s heartbroken, you know. Crazy for you. Hates me. Angry jawline, whiny music… The whole depressing nine yards.”

If he hadn’t spent the last two decades of his life watching for people’s most minute reactions, Blaine might have missed her missed breath.  She catches it quickly enough.  “Right. And he’s going to come storming in here any minute now, punch you in the face a few times, and then run away with me, all while a Celine Dion song swells in the background.”

“I was thinking an intense but soulful instrumental.  Celine…” his lips scrunch.   “A bit passé, don’t you think?”

For all his keen eyes and practiced observation, he doesn’t register the sudden ball of Liv’s free hand until its heel is slamming up against his nose.

He chokes. He falters.  He grabs at his aching cartilage, because  _damn_  for a girl with the frame of a pixie, she can throw a punch.

This should not surprise him. Liv Moore is also, as he recalls semi-lucidly, quite proficient at throwing drinks.

She smiles with all the sweetness of aspartame. “Thinking I need your zombie manwhore to charge in here and punch you for me?”  Her scalpel glints specks of dim lighting.  “ _That’s_  passé.”

And even though everything is falling apart, even though he’s lost his direct route to Liv Moore’s endless stock of brains – he may have to shoot Lowell for that one, at least once; possibly in the kneecap – she has never looked hotter.

Blaine gulps the rust of his own blood.

_Bitch._


	4. Murphy's Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m his girlfriend,” she says it without thinking, letters spurting from her mouth like gasoline. 
> 
> (And Murphy’s Law dictates that they just have to encounter a flame.)

She can’t remember if she was this reckless before the boat party and its bloodstains, or if impulsive daredevil stupidity is yet another nifty zombie bonus.

Felony had never appealed to human Liv.   _Jaywalking_  hadn’t appealed human Liv. Breaking into a brain-dealing murderer’s apartment for his undead client list certainly wouldn’t have flown.

But she’s already died once.  But she watched a gunshot blink her lover lifeless.  But her toes drum when she tries to sit still, her spine cringes, and her head spirals through that night again and again and again.

Liv grinds the memory between her teeth, and continues searching for something (anything) useful.

So.  Anyway. The jury’s still out on whether lowered inhibition is a character flaw or a species trait.

She should mention that to Ravi.  He could run tests, and think through statistics.  Or something.

Granted, that would mean telling Ravi that she’d broken their agreement to ‘wait and see’ about the anonymous tip on Blaine’s whereabouts. Liv scrunches her lips and continues to flounder for evidence.  Never mind informing him that she’d broken into said address.

An apartment of sleek luxury spills around her, all bland colors, high tech, and jagged modernism.  Liv ignores the phoniness and wreaks her hands through drawers and cabinets.

_Please, please let there be something._ He’s supplying the larger zombie population of Seattle with brains. He has to have records or names or –

A footstep thuds behind her.  “And what’s a pretty thing like you doing in Blaine Debeers’s apartment?”  The back of Liv’s neck goes rigid.

Lowell was the last person to catch her mid-snooping.  Faltering a smile towards the stranger looming before her, Liv decides that she probably won’t get a drink out of this encounter.  

“I’m his girlfriend,” she says it without thinking, letters spurting from her mouth like gasoline.  (And Murphy’s Law dictates that they just have to encounter a flame.)

The burly beef-head patrolling Blaine’s apartment crosses his – alarmingly gargantuan – arms.  “Debeers doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

Liv gives a half-hearted shrug, and begs the floor to swallow her. “We’re – working on it?” she sweeps a strained gesture to her sides, wishing for invisibility on every single falling star she’s ever dismissed.  “Hence the surprise visit.”  Swallowing a bouquet of glass shards, she inches a step away. “He thinks I’m clingy.”

“Does he.”

“Crazy, huh?”  Another step. “Commitment issues. You know the type.”

His dark eyes remain narrowed.  Liv keeps talking.

“Do you know where I could leave a message, or…”

“No need.”  A smile.  A mousetrap.  Its cuff around her.  “I’m meeting him here shortly.” Leaning against a wall, he plants his legs wide and his smile smug.  “On his way up as we speak, I’d bet.”

“Yay.” Her toes squirm a pixie’s stride closer to the door.  “I’m more of a talker.”

He might have responded had the door not opened.

_Enter flame._

Liv smothers the razors that shoot between her eyes at the sight of Blaine’s shockwave white hair.  Smooth strides carry him over the threshold, sending his eyes past her in a straight line towards his associate. A sour turn twists his mouth, a far departure from the easy grin he donned for her in the morgue a lifetime (well, Lowell’s death) ago.

“Honey!” she squeaks before anger and shame and hatred can turn her eyes red.

Liv wants nothing more than to drive her fist into his nose, her fingernails fast through his eyeballs.  Instead, before he can speak, before he’s finished turning towards her, she jumps him.

Since accepting a job at the morgue, Liv has seen bodies mangled in every which way HBO could imagine.  She can safely guarantee the universe that she would take any of those injuries, all of them, over this moment.

She curls her fingers in his hair, pushes her lips hard against his, and suckles the surprise from his tongue instead.

Blaine stiffens against her, arms tense at his side and mouth tenser against hers. She credits instinct for the tempo his lips strike, their apparent intent to siphon her every ounce of breath.

Why he’s yet to shove her into a second body bag, why he responds at all, Liv can’t imagine and won’t question.

She pulls away with a flourish, a breath, and a wink.  “That’s for the other night.”

He opens his mouth.  Liv runs. Her bloodless skin burns.  


	5. Slim Pickings (and Other Lies)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The zombie apocalypse came, chose Seattle as its epicenter, and quaked life-as-Liv-knew-it to pieces.

The zombie apocalypse came, chose Seattle as its epicenter, and quaked life-as-Liv-knew-it to pieces.

Pulling her hoodie into a soaked billow over her eyes, Liv keeps her head down, and focuses on Blaine’s New World.  Her steps shuffle about the raindrops and puddles splattering the sidewalk flooded.

“You really know a safe place?” The girl tucked against her side is a mess of chattering teeth, suspicion, and rapid heartbeats.  Human heartbeats; an ever increasing rarity along the west coast.

Liv raises an eyebrow. “Safer than wherever you’ve been holed up.”

“Sorry.” More chattering. “I just… When I heard about a resistance, I imagined its leader would be–”

“Bigger? Tanner?  Male-r?  Trust me, I’d be happy to discuss any and all of the above in scientifically dense detail when we’re off the streets.”  She yanks the girl’s hood harder over her head.  “For now, pretend we’re running for your life.”

Which, well, they kind of are. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie majority must be in want of new brains.  Liv curses the law of supply and demand, and keeps walking.

* * *

The girl admits to half a college degree, a massacred dorm, and a boogieman fear of the man who’s claimed control of Seattle’s nightlife.

“Blaine is a monster,” Liv agrees. The words fit her voice well, summoning just the right edge of disgusted anger.

But anger requires passion, and Liv doesn’t feel much of that anymore.   _Feeling_  belongs to the same past life marked by Ravi and Clive and Major and Peyton. It paints the dream that was Lowell.  

She saves people on autopilot, because it’s what she’s good at, what she’s always done. She’s the other side to Blaine’s embrace-the-undead coin, and it’s as good a role as any to play.

(This is a lie.)

Swallowing a scrap of grave-dug brain from her Tupperware, Liv grimaces. Pickings have gotten slimmer, bodies older, meals more rotted.

(It’s a profoundly sucky role.)

Liv looks at the humans huddled around her dank basement of a hideaway, and tells herself it’s worth it.

She ignores the glares they slant at her dinner.

* * *

Liv hates grave digging.

“Out for an midnight stroll?”  She hates her audience more.

Cemetery mud staining her boots, she eases her shovel, and raises her gaze. “Seattle weather at its finest. How could I miss it?”

Rain drips a pilgrimage from Blaine’s hair, to his cheeks, to his laugh.  “Now, I’m not one to judge, but I’ve got to say it, Liv… Grave digging?  Really?”

“Murder?” she echoes. “Really?”

His palms open towards the damp air.  “Say the word, and you’re on my meal plan.”  If he hears her snort, he ignores it.  “Free of charge. Just stop smuggling humans out of the city, maybe spare a few for me, and we’ll call it even.”

Liv steps closer to him in spite of herself. “Trying to use me for my brains. How nostalgic.”

“Hey, I just want to lend a helping hand.”  He slants his umbrella over her forehead, pauses, pulls it away.  “There’s a price on your head, you know.  Crazy high.”

“You put it there.” And yet he hasn’t taken her in.

“So jaded.” And yet he’s not going to.

Liv rolls her eyes. Candy Land has more surprises than this game.

His free hand rises to trace the gaunt curve of her cheek.  She should flinch away.  She knows this. She should hate herself, should sneer, should snap.  And she would have, once, but this is the only familiarity she has left.

Liv arcs to his fingertips’ graze.  This all she has left of her other life.  It’s less than she deserves, the touch of a murderous sleazebag, but she’ll take it.

It’s like she said.  Pickings are slim.

Her shovel drops in tandem with his umbrella.

Blaine’s grip pierces the back of her head, grinding an almost surgical grip among her hair, against her scalp.  Liv clamps her teeth down hard on his lower lip, suckling and nibbling and tasting.  Inch by inch, her tongue traces him for some remnant of the girl she was when they met. For some – any – feeling.

His hands move to her waist, her hips groan against his, and her shoulder blades sob against a rain-battered crypt.

(She neither knows, nor cares, what he looks for in her.)

Their mouths part. Their breaths tangle. She tramples the smirk that almost crosses his features, pulling him out of the drizzle and into the crypt’s stale-aired cover.

“I hate you,” she murmurs against his earlobe.

“Bane of my existence,” he mumbles against her chest.  

Lies suit them.

 


End file.
